Lycus - Chasms

It's Christmas Eve so I'm drinking tea out of my new Bernie Sanders mug and listening to funeral doom. That seems about right. That being said - Lycus are an incredible band and one whose ability to plumb the depth of human despair ha certainly given me a reason to carry forward this Christmas. With beautifully crafted melodies and simply crushing riffs Lycus understand the spirit of the genre as they scrape along titanic bottom ends and drag you by your manky hair into a strange soundworld that you can revisit again and again.

There's a wonderful sense of forward motion on this album that manages to provide a sense of hope despite the melancholy. Beyond that - it speaks to the quality of the musicianship, while this is certainly a slow record and one that takes a few spins to really digest there is never a dull moment. As a matter of fact I might even bill this as one of the most gosh darned interesting funeral doom records I have ever heard. The droning chants that accentuate these songs are perfectly contrasted by devastating growls and sludgy riffs that run like twisting rivers underneath perfectly composed melodies that reflect a very human sadness.

So let yourself go this Christmas season and dive into something that will allow you to face the true despair of our existence. The thing is - as nihilistic as it might initially seem there's actually something incredibly hopeful about this band, as if out of the murky depths we too can rise up and find a better world. We just have to let the raw heaviness and sadness of this album sink in first. Brilliantly executed and a great example of musicianship in the funeral doom genre Chasms impresses on every level.

Find them on Facebook!
https://www.facebook.com/lycusdoom